Looking forward to my visit to Florianópolis, Brazil. I will deliver a masterclass on governance and innovation in smart cities as part of a Council on Australia Latin America Relations (COALAR) grant funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia at the KCWS2019: SUSTENTABILIDADE E INOVAÇÃO NA ERA DO CONHECIMENTO.
I will present findings from my research on fragile cities at the 2019 Annual ICMA Conference. This research was funded by ICMA as part of my research fellowship. Michael Hunter collaborated with me on this research project.
Resiliency, cybersecurity, and creating more sustainable places are all topics being discussed by local government practitioners and scholars. Could it be that as local governments are increasing reliance on technology that they are becoming more fragile in the absence of considering some of the socio-economic consequences? Join this roundtable to offer your thoughts and opinions.
New paper published in Journal of Medical Internet Research with Tarricone, Cucciniello, Armeni, Petracca, Hall, and Keefe.
Mobile Health Divide Between Clinicians and Patients in Cancer Care: Results From a Cross-Sectional International Survey
Background: Mobile technologies are increasingly being used to manage chronic diseases, including cancer, with the promise of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of care. Among the myriad of mobile technologies in health care, we have seen an explosion of mobile apps. The rapid increase in digital health apps is not paralleled by a similar trend in usage statistics by clinicians and patients. Little is known about how much and in what ways mobile health (mHealth) apps are used by clinicians and patients for cancer care, what variables affect their use of mHealth, and what patients’ and clinicians’ expectations of mHealth apps are.
Objective: This study aimed to describe the patient and clinician population that uses mHealth in cancer care and to provide recommendations to app developers and regulators to generally increase the use and efficacy of mHealth apps.
Methods: Through a cross-sectional Web-based survey, we explored the current utilization rates of mHealth in cancer care and factors that explain the differences in utilization by patients and clinicians across the United States and 5 different countries in Europe. In addition, we conducted an international workshop with more than 100 stakeholders and a roundtable with key representatives of international organizations of clinicians and patients to solicit feedback on the survey results and develop insights into mHealth app development practices.
Results: A total of 1033 patients and 1116 clinicians participated in the survey. The proportion of cancer patients using mHealth (294/1033, 28.46%) was far lower than that of clinicians (859/1116, 76.97%). Accounting for age and salary level, the marginal probabilities of use at means are still significantly different between the 2 groups and were 69.8% for clinicians and 38.7% for patients using the propensity score–based regression adjustment with weighting technique. Moreover, our analysis identified a gap between basic and advanced users, with a prevalent use for activities related to the automation of processes and the interaction with other individuals and a limited adoption for side-effect management and compliance monitoring in both groups.
Conclusions: mHealth apps can provide access to clinical and economic data that are low cost, easy to access, and personalized. The benefits can go as far as increasing patients’ chances of overall survival. However, despite its potential, evidence on the actual use of mobile technologies in cancer care is not promising. If the promise of mHealth is to be fulfilled, clinician and patient usage rates will need to converge. Ideally, cancer apps should be designed in ways that strengthen the patient-physician relationship, ease physicians’ workload, be tested for validity and effectiveness, and fit the criteria for reimbursement.
Paper available at: https://mhealth.jmir.org/2019/9/e13584/
Along with colleagues Wenting Yang and Bo Fan, at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, I have a paper accepted at Journal of Cleaner Production.
Spatial-Temporal Effect of Household Solid Waste on Illegal Dumping
Illegal dumping is an increasingly costly problem with profoundly negative consequences for the livability and sustainability of our communities. The problem of illegal dumping is particularly acute in the developing world. While the literature is rich in descriptive studies on illegal dumping, few studies leverage large-scale spatial-temporal data through innovative analytical tools to study the actual dynamics of household illegal waste dumping. Our study aims to fill this gap by developing a multilevel theoretical model with which to illustrate the impact of illegal dumping. We explore the spatial-temporal distribution of illegal dumping cases using data mining. Next, we integrate datasets reflecting different levels into a hierarchical data structure organized by membership function. We then use a hierarchical generalized linear model to validate our multilevel model. The results indicate that the spatial factors have a significant relationship with illegal dumping, whereas the direct influence of temporal and community-level factors on illegal dumping is insignificant. Furthermore, the moderating effect of management level and public order on the relationship between spatial features and illegal dumping is significant. Based on our results, we offer several suggestions for preventing illegal dumping.
I will be spending two weeks in China at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. During my visit, I will create research partnerships with colleagues in academia, industry, and the public sector. I will deliver two public lectures during my visit.
Oct 23: Shaping the Future of Autonomous Systems in Society
Emerging technologies are fundamentally impacting and transforming all aspects of our society. I am particularly concerned with how technological innovations impact 1) the design of our public institutions, 2) the apparatuses through which we shape, implement, and evaluate public policies, and 3) our governance frameworks for public goods. All indications suggest that we are moving toward a world where autonomous systems will dictate how we interface and interact with other agents and objects in our society. We can take advantage of emerging technologies to make our societies more livable, just, resilient, and sustainable. To realize this future, we need active and sustained engagement by scholars across a myriad of disciplines, especially public policy and management.
Public policy and governance scholars have largely been absent when it comes to engineering efforts related to the design and deployment of autonomous systems and policy debates that will shape their impact on our society. In this talk, I will outline why we need active engagement by public policy and management scholars during phases of autonomous systems development and implementation. Examples will be drawn from over a dozen research engagements that have studied emerging technologies in the public sector, from predictive analytic systems to blockchain, social media platforms, and machine learning algorithms. I will outline key governance dilemmas and policy challenges confronting public agencies as they try to keep up with the rapid pace of technological innovations.
Oct 27: Digital Governance in a World of Autonomous Systems
Emerging technologies are fundamentally impacting and transforming all aspects of our society. I am particularly concerned with how technological innovations impact 1) the design of our public institutions, 2) the apparatuses through which we shape, implement, and evaluate public policies, and 3) our governance frameworks for public goods. All indications suggest that we are moving toward a world where autonomous systems will dictate how we interface and interact with other agents and objects in our society. We can take advantage of emerging technologies to make our societies more livable, just, resilient, and sustainable. We need bold imagination and action to shape the future we want. This talk will outline how the public sector can take a leadership role in the design, development, and deployment of autonomous systems.
The October 27th take place as part of the 2018 Global Cities Forum.
I hold a distinguished visiting research fellow appointment at the China Institute for Urban Governance at Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Cognitive Computing @ Brookings Institution Tech Tank
Performance Analytics Project Report
WalletHub
I have an article in the current issue of the American Planning Association's Planning magazine.
Capturing the Wisdom of Crowds
Combining citizen intelligence and online civic platforms.
By Kevin C. Desouza and Kendra L. Smith
Technology platforms for citizen intelligence are springing up quickly. Platforms such as Deliberatorium, DebateGraph, Cohere, YourView, and CoPe_it! all allow for extensive discourse. Each has special features such as multiple ways to contact other users and participate in discussion boards. Additionally, these platforms employ social analytics, discourse analytics, and social network maps. These sites allow users to gather information and debate ideas and solutions to specific community issues.
Users can also add evidence and information to other users' claims, which triggers conversations and sharing. In many U.S. cities, leaders are finding value in citizen intelligence. Online civic platforms tend to fall into four main categories, as one of us has also noted in an upcoming Journal of Urban Technology article. To read the more, please click here.
To read the print version, please click here.
On April 18, I will deliver a webinar from the General Services Administration on the future of challenges in the public sector. This presentation will draw on my work funded by the IBM Center for the Business of Government on Challenge.gov. The webinar will also highlight findings from my recent work that is looking at how to leverage collective intelligence on participatory platforms. I will conclude with guidelines on how to manage ideas within public agencies based on my book, Intrapreneurship: Managing Ideas Within Your Organization. To register for the webinar, please click here. The webinar is organized by DigitalGov University.
I will be visiting The Ohio State University on February 6th, 2013. During my visit, I will deliver a talk as part of the Baumer Lecture Series in Ohio State’s Knowlton School of Architecture. My talk will outline how technologies are changing the face of urbanization. Specifically, I will outline how citizens are leveraging technologies to develop innovations in planning and governance of urban spaces. Due to the democratization of technologies, the availability of open data, and an educated citizenry, we are seeing an unprecedented rate of innovation in the design, planning, and management of our cities today. This talk will draw on my recent research projects on smart cities, citizen apps and urban technologies, big data management, and challenges and competitions for crowdsourcing innovation.
